http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE DISAGREEABLE INCENSE of sanctimony is permeating presidential politics.
The principal sanctity-mongers are John McCain, Bill Bradley and Al
Gore.

McCain, the Savonarola from Arizona, is the favorite Republican of those
(e.g. the media) who regret that there are Republicans. Two supposed
proofs that he has cornered the market on virtue are his insistence that his
campaign-reform legislation is necessary because everyone in politics,
himself emphatically included, is corrupt, and the fact that his tantrums
demonstrate his "authenticity" and noble intolerance of sin.

"I plead guilty," he says in a guilty-plea-as-self-congratulation gambit, "to
getting angry when I see gross injustices take place such as I see happen
quite often in the Congress of the United States. But do I insult anybody or
fly off the handle or anything like that? No, I don't."

Atlantic Monthly, December 1985: "Just after the July 4 recess, as
freshman Joe Barton was walking down the center aisle of the House to
cast a vote, he found himself in the middle of an angry cross fire of epithets
between Democrat Marty Russo, of Illinois, and Republican John McCain,
of Arizona. Seven-letter profanities escalated to twelve-letter ones and
then to pushes and shoves before the two were separated."

Boston Globe, Aug. 6, 1993: "McCain came across the Senate floor and
while mocking Kennedy, told him to 'shut up,' according to observers in
the chamber. A stunned Kennedy returned the comment, telling McCain to
'shut up' and 'act like a senator."'

Various current Republican senators, who say many of McCain's outbursts
are not about matters of policy ("gross injustices") but about personal
pique, speak off the record with astonishing asperity about McCain,
expressing doubts--if not conviction--that his temper is evidence of a
temperament unsuited to the presidency. The disqualifying flaw, they say, is
characterized by a righteousness that makes McCain disdain the motives of
those who differ with him.

And actually it is kindness, not, as some McCain supporters imply,
cowardice, that causes these senators to speak only off the record. They
expect George Bush's strength in the primaries to obviate the need for
more open criticism of their colleague.

Bill Bradley's low-voltage campaigning--call it the charisma of
Morpheus--is a reprise of Eugene McCarthy's style during his 1968
meander against President Lyndon Johnson. (Remember McCarthy's
drollery: Running for president is like coaching football--you have to be
smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it is
important.) And before McCarthy there was Adlai Stevenson, supposedly
so exquisitely thoughtful that asking him to mix with less worthy politicians
would be akin to sending Henry James to a NASCAR race.

Bradley began his campaign talking incessantly about his unique sensitivity
to, and unique bravery in talking honestly about, racial problems.
Mercifully, he seems to have concluded--for the moment; recidivism would
not startle--that he has worked this pedal on the organ quite enough. But
for months he practiced something Richard Brookhiser of National
Review, writing in the New York Observer, says we have seen before:

"Mr. Bradley practices a special form of guilt-inducement, which also
(sadly) became a technique of Jack Kemp's: the athlete's sneer. Because
Mr. Bradley played games with prosperous black men in the 1960s and
1970s, he thinks that only he, out of all the white race, has enlightened
sentiments on questions of race and poverty, and he won't let the palefaces
forget it."

As Bradley is learning, Gore is a ferocious partisan who constantly detects
the defect of partisanship, meaning a lack of honorable motives, in those
who disagree with him. He denounces opponents of the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty as "reckless" (Sen. Richard Lugar? Six former secretaries
of defense?) and partisan (two former CIA directors appointed by
Clinton?). And he says that Senate opposition to his pride and joy, the
1997 Kyoto Protocol for allocating among nations duties for dealing with
global warming, is "partisan."

Partisan? Five months before the protocol was signed, the Senate said that
in the shape it was taking (and in the end took), the protocol would be
radically unacceptable. By a vote of 95-0 the Senate passed a resolution
conditioning ratification on substantial changes in it. Having ignored that
vote, the administration now does not dare to submit the protocol for
ratification.

Gore's multiplying accusations of partisanship reflect a mentality unable to
accept that honorable, intelligent people can differ about most things. The
name for this mentality is: fanaticism.

For Gore, as for Bradley and McCain, the politics of sanctimony involves
denigrating the motives, and hence the character, of opponents. Which is
why the incense dispensed by the sanctimonious smells
sulfurous.